Molting
by Maidenstear
Summary: "Did you know that ducks lose their feathers all the time?" she asks. "It's called molting."


Aneko: Hi. I don't know what came over me, but I wanted to write this little oneshot. Every time I say "little," though, it ends up being a larger, extensive project, considering that I keep forgetting that the story exists, and getting stuck, and having other "more important" things to do…Anyways, I haven't been writing much in the fanfiction department lately, and this is what my mind wants to think about right now. So, please enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu.

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_**Molting**_

The day is peaceful and silent. The kind of day that makes the breath exhale quietly from the lungs so as not to disturb the sound of the wind that sighs against the rustling leaves of the trees. Water bugs glide across the surface of the lake, their tiny footprints creating overlapping ripples. They are like small dancers, moving to a rhythm no one can hear. The deep-throated croaking of the frogs which is usually so dissonant and alien sounding, creates a unique symphony next to the humming of the cicadas. The sun sits low in the west, prepared soon to dip below the horizon and slumber on the other side of the world.

He sits on the old wooden dock that ends above the water. He did not bring his fishing pole today, nor his quill and paper. He came simply to sit and be, the way he has learned from the old oak tree. He is resting, with his hands flat on the dock as he looks up into the azure of the sky. The air smells of rain and grass and spring.

There are things he wants to say, things he wants to write down before the words fly out of his mind, the ephemeral thought that he cannot hold onto. But in the stillness, he cannot bring himself to speak. It is too difficult while his shoulders are bowed with the burden of his scars. The ones that can be seen and the ones that can't. Sometimes, it seems as though the pain he has gone through has imbedded itself in the lines of his face, to be discovered like the contours of a map.

Behind him, he hears her voice. "There have been a lot of words, haven't there?" She whispers, an echo to his thoughts.

"Too many," he answers. He feels old. Like he is an eighty year old man looking through the eyes of a boy who hasn't even lived for twenty years yet. He wonders if she ever has the same feelings.

Around him lies a puddle of discarded yellow down.

"Did you know that ducks lose their feathers all the time? It's called molting. It's so that they can grow new ones. I think it's like shedding an actual part of yourself, you know? So that you can become new."

He shakes his head and smiles fondly, a soft chuckle rising in his throat. She always was like this—the most hopeful of souls.

"A feather," she says, pushing one across the wood towards him. "For your writing."

He picks it up, marvels at it, admiring the way the yellow turns to gold in the light of the sun. She had always been a duckling, with her oh-so-yellow feathers. An ungainly and awkward duckling, never a full-fledged duck. Maybe that was why he could never entirely accept the fact that she was what she was—because she was clumsy even at being what she was "supposed" to be. Unable to be a girl, but not really a duck either. So what was she?

"I thought only ducks molt. Not ducklings," he says.

"But ducklings have to grow up sometime."

"I suppose."

"You're a duckling too, you know," she says. She says it with such certainty, as though it might be the truest thing in the world. "And you're going to molt sometime too. You're going to drop all of the things that you know shouldn't be yours to carry, and you'll shed that part of yourself and become new."

He laughs then, and it is a laugh that grows not from humor, but from a pain that he doesn't know what to do with, and before he realizes it, the laughter has stopped, and his eyes burn with unwanted moisture. As he struggles with the feelings that he despises, he needs her to be there, to feel her warmth against his back as an anchor, an assurance of what is real and what he knows is only in his mind.

"Sorry," he chokes out in a whisper. "Sorry. I'm so sorry." And for a while, it is the only thing he knows how to say. There should be more. He should have to explain himself. But he doesn't. And he knows she doesn't expect him to. Maybe she doesn't know what he's apologizing for, but even if she doesn't, he cannot drive away the need to tell her, make her understand that he's really so very—

"Why are you sorry? Why are there tears? We did what we knew was right, didn't we?"

He couldn't understand the tranquility in her voice. "Yes, but…"

She brushes his hand. A simple act.

"Someday, you're going to wake up, and you're going to find out that some things aren't what they seem to be," she says.

He shakes his head. If what she says is true, then he wants all of his tiredness to go away. Then maybe he can think about lifting his head high enough to see the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening. But right now, it is too hard. He can only hope that what she says hold some small grain of truth. A small voice in his ear whispers that he knows she is right. As long as she is here, no matter what, he can look to the next day. When he sees in her eyes the same thing that is in his own, he knows that the morning will always come.

Sometimes, she is so bright that he is afraid to look at her. It is the brightness that he fears will eclipse him.

A cloud passes over the sun. In the gathering dusk, he looks down at his hands. Ink-stained and rough, he can still feel the handle of a sword there. If he listens hard enough, he can hear the clash of metal, and the sound of a long and beautiful song.

A night chill passes over his body that he cannot easily ignore as a sigh passes through his lips that escapes to the sky and becomes vapor.

"You should probably go," she suggests softly.

"Yeah," he says. "I know." But still, he is loath to go, and leave her by herself.

She laughs—a sound like the wind—as though reading his thoughts. "Go—I'll be fine. I always am, aren't I?"

"But…" he whispers. "When I leave…" He didn't want to wake up. It would be too lonely of a waking, too lonely of an end to a beautiful happiness.

Wishes are deceptively beautiful in the hour of their birth. They prance from dry, cracked lips to take their place among the stars. In truth, he thinks they might be one of the most melancholy things that exist.

She brushes his hand again, but it is not such a simple thing anymore. He desperately wants to pull his hand away from the feeling of the feathers against his skin, but if he does, he will lose the small thread that connects them. His indecision is a thorn that tears away at his heart.

"Go," she whispers. "You know I'm always here."

When he finally stands, the sun warming his back, he cannot turn and look at her one more time. But then again, he never can. He wants to—desperately, he does—but that stiffness in his back is a warning against the desire.

Another sigh, one that is strong enough that he can feel it being pulled from the center of himself. The hardest part of the dreaming is the waking.

"Just count to three, and open your eyes."

"But what if I don't want to?"

"One."

The happy ending they were striving for seems far away now. He feels selfish. Where is the bravery and the hope and the honor? Even though the ending they desired was reached, there is a large hole in it where a girl should be.

"Two."

He wants to see pinkish hair and that goofy smile. He isn't a prince like Mytho, who wants and needs a princess. He just wants…

"Three."

He forces his eyes open.

Reality is a stale and unforgiving cold taste in his mouth that he cannot swallow. In the darkness before the morning, he lies in the small room and drinks in the feeling of breathing. He turns his head, searching, but the room is achingly empty.

When he rises, his body still sore with the phantoms of old wounds, the sun has not yet appeared, and mist swirls about his legs in slow tendrils as he walks along the path through the trees. By the lake, ducks still lay sleeping with their heads covered under wing. There is no bright shock of yellow to greet his eyes.

"What are you doing out here? Are you looking for something?"

He turns to see who is speaking, but the sun has begun to rise above the lip of the horizon, and he is blinded by the liquid brightness of it.

"I thought I was, but maybe it was just a dream."

Laughter. "A dream? You dream a lot, don't you?"

He walks off the dock towards her. "Is that bad? Not knowing when I'm waking and when I'm dreaming?" Sometimes, he still feels like he's drowning. Those brief moments between the dream and reality when he is as weak and helpless as a child (or a knight in a story).

It's like he's being thrown about by the ocean, at the mercy of the waves as he is tossed back and forth, until he tumbles under the surface and doesn't know which way is up anymore.

The simple act of breathing can be harder than it seems. He stops a few feet from her, at a loss for words.

"You weren't there this morning," He breathes into the quiet. He takes her in, afraid that if he looks away for a moment, she will be lost forever.

"Were you afraid that I had disappeared?"

He counts the freckles on her face. That's right, her hair was always that weird salmon color, not pink. But her eyes are still that unfailing blue that could not belong to anyone else.

He rests his hand against the curve of her cheek. She is as warm and as human as he is, but more fragile, and softer.

"My delight," he murmurs, and it is enough.

She smiles the smile that he loves more than the sun. "My knight."

He laughs, shaking his head. "I'm nowhere near a knight. You know that."

"Maybe not Mythos' knight." She still uses his old name. Not his name as Prince. "But you're mine."

He doesn't agree with her—he isn't the least bit knightly, he knows—but he dares not argue about it. He knows that she'll get that look in her eye, and her cheeks will puff out as she frowns at him, trying to look intimidating. He doesn't want to fight. Too much precious, precious time will be lost. Time that he never thought he would have again. He wants to take all of the time that he can, holding it in his hands and storing it up in his heart as an everlasting treasure. To waste even a second is a frightening thought.

"The dream, and the nightmare…are over."

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Aneko: I hope you liked it. While I was writing this, I feel like the plot (If that's what it can be called) morphed into something completely different from what I had originally planned, as stories are wont to do. But I like it nonetheless.

And now, on to something completely different!

Until next time, my dears!


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